SP Fantasy (Game of Thrones) A Clash of Kings (7.0 released 13th of May, 2019)

[CitizenQ]

For those way late to the party..

As has been pointed out multiple times, there are heavy spears and light spears. Heavy Spears cannot be broken, and iirc, do more damage than light spears.

For those that lack reading comprehension...

It's almost like I specifically pointed that out, pointed out the flaws of it, then moved on to say that even still the current system is broken due to the insanely high break chance. Almost.

I literally just want to be able to adjust the break chance so that sneezing on a lance doesn't turn it into splinters. No one has been able to tell me how to do it though. Spears etc are nowhere near as fragile in Brytenwalda.

 

[TarquinGaming]

For those that lack reading comprehension...

It's almost like I specifically pointed that out, pointed out the flaws of it, then moved on to say that even still the current system is broken due to the insanely high break chance. Almost.

I literally just want to be able to adjust the break chance so that sneezing on a lance doesn't turn it into splinters. No one has been able to tell me how to do it though. Spears etc are nowhere near as fragile in Brytenwalda.

Hey now, no need to be like that. This is a conversation that has been raging on this board since 1.4, when there were not even Heavy Spears yet. Some of us have been talking about these issues for the last 3 months. In fact, dissatisfaction with how certain things in 1.4 worked was what got me into tweaking the mod for my personal use (and it's a very fulfilling thing to do with your time, I promise).

I have a post on the previous page explaining how to change the flags on a Heavy Spear to make it couch-able on horseback, there's another flag in that list to let you have a shield with it. If you want it to look like a lance, that'll take a bit more effort but the item mesh will be listed in Morgh's as well.

As for tripping, sure it sucks to deal with: but you will find a way to work around it tactically, and eventually you'll have 5 or 6 in athletics and you'll barely ever notice it. I was pretty opposed to the new mechanics when they were introduced, because I abhor change. After a few hundred hours of playtime, they're just another part of the texture, and you get to laugh a little to yourself when you trip as opposed to saying "omg why do I fall so much!" - You fell so much because you were only level 1, and didn't put points into athletics.

What doesn't get complimented enough is how great the light spears breaking works with the not-too-smart AI. I started playing on 1.31, and you always remember your first love. Things in ACOK have changed a lot since then, and there's certainly a lot that I miss from the good old days of massively expensive troops and land in every town, but on balance I'm happy with the position of the mod and especially excited with the direction that it's taking. If I didn't like it, I'd still be on 1.31. Can't lance fools anymore? How good are you at cav archery, or at hitting guys with a sword from full gallop? Diversify your bonds, Sers!

postscript: Get Morgh's editor. There's a TON you can do by yourself without trying too hard.

 

[maddog3001]

For diplomacy can you somehow make a feature called bending the knee, in which if you agree the person who bends the knee stays as the same faction but they have limited options and the leader gives you a set percentage of his money and his tributes from vassals, kings can call huge armies from all factions that they own, so lets say your at war with the reach, you have taken a few castles then you defeat mace tyrell, capture him and a lot of vassals he can bend the knee and accept you as king, so when you go in the factions menu, it will say player faction-kingdom, reach-sworn to player faction, or something like that, and then also implement aims, so tywin wants to get all factions to bend the knee as does stannis and renly, whilst robb and balon has the riverlands bent, and only wants peace as an independent kingdom, and factions like the vale and dorne are willing to bend the knee to whoever they believe will be best for them, and wars are declared more like, renly's kingdom declares war on tywins kingom or something like that, then if renly gets dorne onto his side, it says dorne is now sworn to renly

 

[UnclePutte]

snip

I have to say that this issue's been worked over time and again, and comes down to that light spears are as Cozur wants them to be, not how you want them to be, and will stay so.

I'm in favor of keeping light spears fragile as toothpicks, as it strengthens men-at-arms. They have the ability to kill horses on initial charges, now, but are less prone to being ineffectual due to the AI's manic need to apply spears in such close quarters that they cannot deal damage, or swippity-swap between spear and hand weapon again and again instead of swinging either.

Admittedly, I'm also in favor of keeping the spears and the falling effect because of the constant complaining over how they're "wrong". 

 

[TarquinGaming]

diplomacy idea [snip]

It would be cool, but I'm fairly certain it can't be done. It'd probably be more practicable to have functional dragons than to change something so fundamental about the AI. Put it this way: you can't even get allies to defend each other's cities from sieges- turn on debug mode sometime, there is absolutely 0 interaction between the AI of the various factions when they make their decisions, it's all internal (What's the marshall's personality like? How much damage have they taken in the war? How are the controversy numbers? Are any of our lands currently besieged?  Is there a weak enemy city within a long march? Where is Lord Beric?) Also, lore reasons.

 

[Azsouth]

Just wanted to say that I'm exited about the new cities, can you tell us how many more will be added (to essos)? and will they have custom scenes or be copies of other existing cities (I like LordCanutes work and would personally like to see more of it if he's working on this still)?

as for diplomacy, when the Khalesaar invades will they be going to war with more than just Volantis still? also will there be any tweaks to the diplomacy of Norvos, Braavos, Lorath, and Qohor to allow some sort of conflict between them (think in the world book they said Pentos and Braavos had a beef with each-other but you've expressed that Pentos won't be going to war)?

 

[TarquinGaming]

Preview is up!

http://www.moddb.com/mods/a-clash-of-kings/news/20-preview-4-towns-mountains-and-pigs

 

[CitizenQ]

For those that lack reading comprehension...

It's almost like I specifically pointed that out, pointed out the flaws of it, then moved on to say that even still the current system is broken due to the insanely high break chance. Almost.

I literally just want to be able to adjust the break chance so that sneezing on a lance doesn't turn it into splinters. No one has been able to tell me how to do it though. Spears etc are nowhere near as fragile in Brytenwalda.

Hey now, no need to be like that. This is a conversation that has been raging on this board since 1.4, when there were not even Heavy Spears yet. Some of us have been talking about these issues for the last 3 months. In fact, dissatisfaction with how certain things in 1.4 worked was what got me into tweaking the mod for my personal use (and it's a very fulfilling thing to do with your time, I promise).

I have a post on the previous page explaining how to change the flags on a Heavy Spear to make it couch-able on horseback, there's another flag in that list to let you have a shield with it. If you want it to look like a lance, that'll take a bit more effort but the item mesh will be listed in Morgh's as well.

As for tripping, sure it sucks to deal with: but you will find a way to work around it tactically, and eventually you'll have 5 or 6 in athletics and you'll barely ever notice it. I was pretty opposed to the new mechanics when they were introduced, because I abhor change. After a few hundred hours of playtime, they're just another part of the texture, and you get to laugh a little to yourself when you trip as opposed to saying "omg why do I fall so much!" - You fell so much because you were only level 1, and didn't put points into athletics.

What doesn't get complimented enough is how great the light spears breaking works with the not-too-smart AI. I started playing on 1.31, and you always remember your first love. Things in ACOK have changed a lot since then, and there's certainly a lot that I miss from the good old days of massively expensive troops and land in every town, but on balance I'm happy with the position of the mod and especially excited with the direction that it's taking. If I didn't like it, I'd still be on 1.31. Can't lance fools anymore? How good are you at cav archery, or at hitting guys with a sword from full gallop? Diversify your bonds, Sers!

postscript: Get Morgh's editor. There's a TON you can do by yourself without trying too hard.

Thanks. I actually have morgh's editor (plenty of stuff that needed to be changed, no blocking with two-handed axes, Longswords being two-hand only instead of bastard swords etc).

I actually have already done the Spear to Lance conversion, but the point is, I don't actually want an indestructable lance. I want it to break, just not every time it touches something, you know, like a real lance. I would love to know how to edit that, since it isn't an option in Morgh's (I assume its a script somewhere that I haven't been able to find). Have lances and heavy spears have roughly the same break chance and light lances and light spears have a higher one. Better all around.

Addendum: Why hasn't the "Nearby enemy party" feature from Floris been implemented here (The one where if an enemy force of equal size is pops up when you are FFing it shows a warning)?

 

[kalarhan]

I don't actually want an indestructable lance. I want it to break, just not every time it touches something, you know, like a real lance.

Hey, can you link to us the reference you are using to determine if a lance should or not break in a charge attack? You said real lances do not. I wonder if that is true.

You will need a study that shows the materials used to craft those spears. Then stress tests. In special tests that simulate a high speed attack from a horse against flesh (could the spear be kept on hand or not, would it break, etc).

Or a mythbusters episode kind of show... not ideal, but something.

 

[WldBill]

I don't actually want an indestructable lance. I want it to break, just not every time it touches something, you know, like a real lance.

Hey, can you link to us the reference you are using to determine if a lance should or not break in a charge attack? You said real lances do not. I wonder if that is true.

You will need a study that shows the materials used to craft those spears. Then stress tests. In special tests that simulate a high speed attack from a horse against flesh (could the spear be kept on hand or not, would it break, etc).

Or a mythbusters episode kind of show... not ideal, but something.

http://www.imaginingthepast.com/violence/violence-and-vengeance/weapons-and-armor-the-technology-of-medieval-warfare/

"Usually a one-use weapon during the charge, after battle was joined, lances were often accompanied by a secondary weapon."

There are lots of references to lances breaking during the initial charge. This was just the first one I found.  The lance breaking is a realistic feature.

 

[CitizenQ]

They DID break, but not on the first hit, not normally anyways. The lances you see shatter spectacularly at Medieval Times are designed to do that. They are blunted, made out of soft wood and hollow, to protect the actors.

Historical accuracy aside; in game lances are basically useless now. If you do hit someone more often than not you hit their shield, break your lance, and now you are fighting the rest of the battle with your secondary. Which is why, for both gameplay and accuracy reasons, I suggested changing the break-chance to something less ridiculous, or barring that, someone posting how to mod it so that those who don't like it can change it. Same as many do with crazy item properties like not being able to block with axes etc.

 

[WldBill]

They DID break, but not on the first hit, not normally anyways. The lances you see shatter spectacularly at Medieval Times are designed to do that. They are blunted, made out of soft wood and hollow, to protect the actors.

Historical accuracy aside; in game lances are basically useless now. If you do hit someone more often than not you hit their shield, break your lance, and now you are fighting the rest of the battle with your secondary. Which is why, for both gameplay and accuracy reasons, I suggested changing the break-chance to something less ridiculous, or barring that, someone posting how to mod it so that those who don't like it can change it. Same as many do with crazy item properties like not being able to block with axes etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1tAqrMQaEw

Here is a great documentary about the lance. For the scientific proof you are seeking, you may wish to start at the 21:00 mark.  Picture this, a knight charges at full speed on his stallion, lance in the couch position, and drives it directly into the chainmail-armored infantryman before him.  Now, how exactly did he remove that same lance from the now dead man and continue on fighting with the same lance? Or did he just ride around with a lance kabob the rest of battle?  It would have either broken or remained lodged in the vanquished foe.

I think you will enjoy that video and it will give you a better idea of how the physics of medieval warfare actually work.

 

[TarquinGaming]

Gameplay talk:

Spoiler

While we're talking about gameplay reasons, let's be honest: even lances as they are, are incredibly strong. A heavy knight with a lance, used properly, is almost always a 3 for 1 on the battlefield if not better. He kills someone with the lance, he runs full-gallop over someone with a quality horse, and he'll take someone, or several someones, out with his sword before he dies. Improving the functionality of lances will make the most powerful common units in the game even more powerful. I know that I don't sit around saying "Man, Heavy Knights should be more devastating" unless I've buffed all the other units first.

And like Putte said, it keeps your men from going into perma-swap mode.

We probably did 20 pages, no exaggeration, of collectively (to one degree or another) complaining about/sourcing arguments/giving ideas for light spear functionality. In response to this, Cozur reduced the break chance and put in Heavy Spears in 1.5, as well as reducing the stumbling chance (part of the same general complaint, usually). It should be remembered that the spear breaking happened concurrently with the re-introduction of the war lance, which does far more damage than the couchable spears did in 1.31, and that the light spears had their damage increased as well as having their couching-abilities removed. I'm on this board all the time (ACOK is pretty much the only game I play) and I remember a lot, I don't think Cozur is unsatisfied with the current state of the spears.

He asked for suggestions, but suggesting spear changes is probably more common than asking for giants or dragons as of late.

Anyway. Until there's a reason to not get horses killed (not possible in Warband, non-lord/companion units have no memory), the last thing Knights need is a buff. And if the concern is just because you want a lance on your player character, c'mon, be sporting, you already get to have a brain, you don't need THAT many advantages in battle.

Historical-ish lance rambling:

Spoiler

I'm an avid student of history, and lance types and construction changed a lot over time. The saddle and stirrups are of maximum import, but things like that aren't being discussed. Tournament lances were specifically made to break upon impact (hollow or fluted wood, lighter woods) and with blunted/rounded tips, sometimes with a sort of "prong" fastened on the end, because [physics] they didn't want people to die: think of racecar construction, and how they are designed to fly into a ton of pieces (it is so that those flying pieces can take some of the energy with them). Because we know that tournament lances were made specifically to break, we can intuit that other lances had different constructions. And they did! Lances meant for killing people didn't have shafts designed to splinter and had pointed heads and were made out of harder woods like ash (depending on time period!), because [physics] you want the smallest point of contact between the lanced-body and the lancer.

Now would lances built for war and made out of ash break? Sure, not 100% of the time, but a lot of the time. You certainly wouldn't make them to break, because lance designed to break won't transfer as much energy into the target since a lot will be lost in the shattering (depending on the time period, bamboo became popular in certain contexts, but I digress). If your lance didn't break and it was stuck in a body, you could twist to break suction and continue riding forward, letting the momentum pull the shaft from the corpse. But most of the time the context of a battle would make you want a weapon you actually defend yourself with. You'd look a proper idiot if you got your horse stabbed in the neck and then got your legs broken by the fall, all because you had a 12 foot stick in your hand instead of a sword.

You can hit someone on the shield with a tourney lance hard enough knock them off their horse and the lance won't break sometimes, even though it's designed to.

This is just what I remember from various histories that I don't have on hand right now, and some of it may be incorrect, and for that I apologize in advance. It is certainly incomplete, but you could write a thesis on the subject if you were so inclined. Many people have. If you are interested in some qualified folks and their takes on lance construction in the War of the Roses, I'd recommend posting a topic in reddit.com/r/askhistorians . They have great contributors there and you may well get an answer sourced to your satisfaction.

And now my video is done rendering, so I leave you all to this riveting conversation.

 

[Seighfryd aka Baraz]

My thought is that, if a lance is made not to break on a full charge, imagine the energy sent back to the rider's shoulder/arm or being stuck.  Of course, I could be fully wrong, but it seems like a bad concept.  I imagine that a very skilled or trained lancer could manage to hit the enemy on the upper body so the energy glances off and throws the body backwards.

 

[TarquinGaming]

My thought is that, if a lance is made not to break on a full charge, imagine the energy sent back to the rider's shoulder/arm or being stuck.  Of course, I could be fully wrong, but it seems like a bad concept.  I imagine that a very skilled or trained lancer could manage to hit the enemy on the upper body so the energy glances off and throws the body backwards.

Some lancer physics and explanation, with a couple pictures.

Spoiler

here is a good picture to illustrate why this does not occur

http://www.uh.edu/engines/CD-EnergyIsEternalDelight/images/Stirrups-600px.jpg

and here's a good image of a modern reproduction of an early medieval cavalryman's saddle.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--3-d5HOgFcg/UJuqCy3oqzI/AAAAAAAAAtA/2MEYOKIjvMg/s1600/Medieval+Saddle.jpg

Basically, it falls under what I said in the "stirrups and saddles are of maximal importance" line. All of the energy sent back, sans a bit of entropy, doesn't stop on the rider's shoulder/arm. The rider is braced in their stirrups, so the axial force is transferred to the stirrups and then the saddle, that force is absorbed by the horse. Going full-tilt at someone with a lance and hitting them square on will rock you back in the saddle but it shouldn't knock you off of it: war saddles were specifically designed to prevent this as much as possible. Also, the horsemen has to be prepared to yield the reins before impact, so that the force going through his body doesn't jerk the horse's head to the side.

As for trying for a "glancing" blow of any kind, due to the physics of a lance the more oblique your angle of attack is, the greater the odds become that you are going to hit yourself with your own lance as it bounces off the object you barely hit, and that you're going to hit yourself hard enough to regret it (or not have time to regret it, if you're in battle or fall badly). A lancer can modify how much force he transmits by his technique, but the angles that are possible are pretty set in stone.

In reality, much of being a skilled lancer (besides being good with your horse) was knowing how to use your muscles properly to be an efficient "shock absorber/buffer" for the horse. I've no doubt that someone could deliver a lance in such a way as to rip their shoulder out of the socket: but they would have been trained how to use their core strength and legs to prevent just such a thing from happening.

tl;dr The energy goes mostly into the horse, glancing blows will break your own bones.

 

[NikeBG]

Basically, it falls under what I said in the "stirrups and saddles are of maximal importance" line. All of the energy sent back, sans a bit of entropy, doesn't stop on the rider's shoulder/arm. The rider is braced in their stirrups, so the axial force is transferred to the stirrups and then the saddle, that force is absorbed by the horse.

According to this old, but popular source, the stirrups actually aren't so useful for a couched lance. For horse archery and mounted melee fights - yes, but for couched lancing - not so much.

 

[TarquinGaming]

According to this old, but popular source, the stirrups actually aren't so useful for a couched lance. For horse archery and mounted melee fights - yes, but for couched lancing - not so much.

I'm pretty familiar with that article, I had a professor once who was really into The Great Stirrup Controversy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stirrup_Controversy). I wouldn't say the article argues that stirrups "are not so useful," merely that they are not mandatory. The saddle is also not "mandatory". Gotta have the horse and pointy stick tho!

If you understand that article primarily as a response to the idea (GSC) that saddles/stirrups were Absolutely Necessary for shock cavalry to exist (they were not) and a rejection of the historiography that came along with that idea (it was poor) it is easier to find the (meandering) thesis of the piece. If you read far enough in you'll find lines like:

Make no mistake - I would rather joust with saddle and stirrups than without. They definitely aid in the rider's control during and after impact. But if "Shock Combat" without saddle or stirrups is possible, (Though granted, certainly not preferable) what then do we make of the iconographic evidence. And where do we date the "discovery" of the couched lance position and the invention of Shock Combat?

 

[NikeBG]

Of course. I guess I should have stressed the "so" part in the "so useful" to make my point better.

 

[Vloeistof]

Hi !

I downloaded this mod last night and played already some hours on it... Great mod !

I've only encountered this (bug ?), once I've conquered a castle , the 'thank you for freeing me' messages appeared, all good.
But than on the 'continue ...' screen I couldn't continue, I received small amounts of money when I clicked continue, after 5451 clicks I just quitted because it wouldn't seem to end.

Is this a familiar issue ???

pls help ! 

Thx,

 

[Reus]

Hi !

I downloaded this mod last night and played already some hours on it... Great mod !

I've only encountered this (bug ?), once I've conquered a castle , the 'thank you for freeing me' messages appeared, all good.
But than on the 'continue ...' screen I couldn't continue, I received small amounts of money when I clicked continue, after 5451 clicks I just quitted because it wouldn't seem to end.

Is this a familiar issue ???

pls help ! 

Thx,

Did the money just continue flowing in after every click?